The beam element is a structural element with two nodes and six degrees of freedom (three translations and three rotations) per node. The connection between constituent nodes and element orientation are defined with the *ELEMENT_BEAM keyword, while nodal locations are defined with the *NODE keyword. The *SECTION_BEAM keyword is used to assign cross sectional properties and choose element formulation. All beam elements in this truck model use the Hughes-Liu formulation with cross section integration (elform=1). Beam elements that adhere to this formulation are based on degeneration of the isoparametric 8-node solid element.